Colin Dullaghan

Veda: I wanna jump off the coffee table!
Penny’s brother Tom: Don’t do it. You’ll slip, cut your head on the corner of that glass there and bleed out.

Veda goes for just *one more* block on her tower… Look for the lip-synch-ed “Oh my goodness!” at the end, as she flees the scene.

I don’t believe the children are our future. I read and hear a lot about how you should really pay close attention and value each and every precious little angel, because you never know which one might grow up to be the next scientist or leader or athlete, the one who cures cancer or brokers world peace or shatters an Olympic record, or all three.

That’s irrelevant.

I say this because I *have* a little kid, and I don’t consider the time and energy I give her to be an “investment in tomorrow” at all.

It’s a gift. A duty. A kindness, a joy or a genetic compulsion — call it what you want. I do it because I’m her dad and I love her.

Not because I think she might save the world one day.

Veda, you do not have to save the world one day. If you end up doing that, great, but you know what? This decision your mom and I made to bring you onto this Earth and look after you until you were able to stand on your own?

That was done out of love. Not investment. And there are no strings attached.

I want you to try your best to be happy and I want you to make the effort to help other people.

Not because you owe it to us, or to anybody. The reason I want you to do it is simply that I think it’s the best use of your time here.

But really, it’s up to you. You’re not “our” future, kiddo. You’re your own.

Just thought you’d all like to know that yesterday Veda was officially 26 months old, people. And being that it’s such a momentous occasion, she’d like to share her favorite joke with you. I messed up the setup in the video, unfortunately… It’s supposed to start, “What’s a mouse’s favorite *game*?”

This is Uncle Mark:
(with the dark mustache)

And this is Aunt Arlene:
(the pretty blonde lady)

And the two of them together are incredibly nice and particularly highly ranked in *this* Dullaghan household right now because they recently gave us a huge, great and thoughtful gift: They let us use their timeshare property for a week. “Just say when,” said our lovely aunt and uncle, so we said, “How about the tail end of a long and sucky midwestern winter?”

Because this is what we were looking at around February in northern Indiana:

So. Uncle Mark made the arrangements, I made sure Penny’s work schedule was clear, and we were off to Orlando.

It was great. We got to do *everything.*

For starters, we got to catch a flight out that left time for us to have dinner and conk out on the plane.

It was kind of a long flight, though, and Veda wasn’t so much into the sleeping until the last hour or so, and then there was the thing when we got there and encountered the DIRTIEST TRAVEL TRICK I’VE EVER PERSONALLY ENCOUNTERED* before scooting across town to our condo.

*Upon our arrival at the airport, a rental car company whose name rhymes with nifty (ironically enough) informed us that yes, they did have car seats available like they’d assured me over the phone, and that using one of said car seats would cost us $11 per day. Grumble grumble from me. And, you know, it’s coming up on midnight, and we’ve got a dead-tired daughter and no clear idea where, exactly the place we’re staying is located, but still. I’m not paying these nifty folks $90 to let me use a $40 car seat. So while the safest thing to do would have been to bite the bullet and pay up, we instead drove five minutes from the airport to a Wal-Mart and bought ourselves a seat. The rental-car gate lady gave me some guff about not having Veda strapped in, and became the recipient of probably the nastiest tone of voice I’ve managed in the past several years.

But then we slept and then came DAY ONE, when we got to:
- Play in the super-nice condo in the morning when we woke up. (The bunk beds made it a snap to do fake headstands.)

- Greet the friendly elephants out front. It was a pretty family-centric resort where we stayed.

We also got to go grocery-shopping at the local Publix to stock our pantry for the week. That’s always fun and vacation-y. Besides, we’d missed Publix, and totally forgotten – never realized at all, actually – that strawberries are in season in Florida in March.

We also, of course, got to play in the pools and splash pad at the resort. Fun. Then we got to take a nap, play some more, then dress up nice and go out to dinner in Celebration, Florida — a lovely town that seems entirely made up. But still nice.

We went over to the lake and threw in a little rock we’d brought from back home and everything.

On DAY TWO, we got to:
Pile in our rental minivan and head northwest, through orange groves and prettiness (and some not-so-prettiness) to get to Weeki Wachee Springs on the gulf coast. We saw real mermaids (!) swooping around in a natural spring, taking occasional puffs on their air hoses but never once going up to the surface. I felt like I got water up my nose just looking at them.
Then we drove back and tried to go to the beach on the way, but, you know, it was Spring Break and everything. Didn’t know that. Couldn’t even find a parking space. So we gave up on Pine Beach and checked out Hernando, but gave up on that too. Back to Orlando we go, via Tampa this time to vary the scenery a little. At least we got to see mermaids!

On DAY THREE, we got to:
Wake up and go check out something Veda had been asking about since we got there: the swan boats. Big fiberglass paddleboats that plied the waters of the little lake behind our building. So we walked down, signed up and hopped in a swan of our own.
And that was cool… but Veda wasn’t really herself. Just a little cranky, a little fussy, a little un-Vedic. And pointing out that the boats were made just a half-hour’s drive from our house in little old North Webster, Indiana (!) didn’t seem to cheer her up.
So it was time for a doctor visit. And the local urgent care facility checked us right in, checked the little one out and confirmed what we should have guessed: Ear infection. “Veda, does your ear hurt?” we asked, as soon as the doctor had left. “Uh-huh.” “Okay, then, which one?” She pointed to her right. Dangsauce!
A prescription for some Amoxicillin and we were on our way, feeling much more at peace with things now that we at least knew what was wrong.

That afternoon we mainly just hung out in the room, reading quietly while she napped, then playing games in her room when she woke up. Poor Boog.
After bedtime that night, I headed out to drive around Kissimmee and try to get a picture of the perigee moon that coincided with our trip. Success? Eh, sorta. Made an introduction to some good-looking cows, though. And also steered my van into the local area I feared most: Disney. The crowds, the rules, the regulations… it all seemed way too structured for my taste. But at 8 in the evening, the crowds are mainly gone, and nobody complains about a random dude exploring the parking lots and employee access roads in a rented Chrysler. That was fun.
But that was only three days in.
On DAY FOUR, with Veda starting to feel better, we decided that What Must Happen was for us to meet up with our friends the Pacellas in St. Augustine.
Ol’ Augie is just about exactly halfway between where we were and where they were, and happens to have a totally wonderful beach to play on. It was extra cool to get to play with them that day because they’re pretty much Olympic-grade beachgoers.
They had the blanket, the hats, the umbrella, the shovels, the lunch… everything. The Pacellas know how to beach. Gwen even put some “beach makeup” on the kids, which looked like a huge tube of chap-stick but was actually sunscreen. Clever.

The kids had a blast playing together. (It was the first time we’ve seen Veda have that much fun on the beach, actually.) And Gwen and Penny were, it’s safe to say, thoroughly thrilled to be together for the afternoon. Pen pals who talk all the time, but never in person, tend to react that way.

And since all that had gone so darn well, we worked up our courage for DAY FIVE and did… Disney. Now, on the one hand, a 2-year-old is “too young” for The Happiest Place on Earth, and there’s the (invalid) argument that “She won’t remember it, anyway. (Yes, and we’ll all be dead in a hundred years, too. So what?) But then on the other hand there’s the pertinent fact that Disney doesn’t charge admission for kids under 3, and our resort place was literally walking distance from the park, and you’re already there in Orlando with time to spend, with a kid who knows what Cinderella’s castle looks like, and sure it’s crowded but just what kind of a wussbag dad are you, anyway?

Anyway. We went. And it was fun! Absolutely huge, of course, and knowing that Veda’s endurance was finite we wisely (on some good advice) honed our attack on a very specific area: The Magic Kingdom. And mainly just the Fantasyland area. No Space Mountain, no Epcot, no monorail. But this is a kid who can be thrilled by *geese.* Nasty, gray geese waddling beside a runoff pond in an apartment complex. In Fantasyland, friends, Veda was beside herself with glee.

I can’t say she was as fond of the rides. We decided to do the It’s a Small World boat thing first, you know, so we could have the song seared into our psyches from now until eternity, and it was really impressive. But the darkness spooked the little one somewhat. We had better luck in the Swiss Family Robinson’s treehouse, which isn’t so much a ride but an opportunity to carry your child up many flights of stairs. Still neat. Mickey’s 3-D Philharmagic was super-impressive too, but “soopa doopa scaiw-y” for Ms. V.

Hey, though, at lunch her milk was (sorta) named after her! The only bummer of the day was that it was time to leave Uncle Mark and Aunt Arlene’s timeshare. After Sunday, it was time to let somebody else have their turn. So we were bound for the Baymont on the other end of town. Fair enough.

Dinner at Olive Garden (make fun if you must; we made up for it by sampling local cuisine a few paragraphs down) was tasty, and stocked us well for DAY SIX, in which we got *back* in our blue minivan and sped the heck out of Orlando, heading for the Atlantic Ocean.
My guidebook said Titusville was pretty, but I somehow overlooked the part explaining that the adjective only applied to two blocks of it. I was really trying to get to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, and had somehow missed the bridge on our way north out of town. A helpful fellow on a bicycle adventure got out his mega-nice map and set me straight. There we saw birds, boardwalk and a big stuffed alligator that I don’t think Veda has forgotten yet. Not at all. (So much for lost memories, eh?)

You can drive North from Merritt Island and go more or less straight to New Smyrna Beach, which is where we finished our vacation. Just a “laid-back, old-Florida kind of of beach town” is how our friend Scott described the place, and he was right.
Gorgeous sand, little pink houses, not too much concern about the world back on the mainland. We stayed at the Holiday Inn, which I actually liked a lot. The view was terrific and the room was huge, with a nice separate area for Veda to nap while Penny and I stayed up to read. No more scrunching together in the bathroom from 7 to 11 pm. They even mailed back the ugly coffee mugs I’d bought for the Grandmas and forgotten in the room when we checked out. Whew!

We had lunch at Breakers, as Scott directed, and dinner at JB’s Fish Camp. Their blackened Mahi sandwich was among my favorite things ever to have eaten. I imagine my enjoyment was enhanced by my naptime jaunt to the Indian River Lagoon Preserve just a few miles from our hotel. A beautiful place where I took lots of Holga pictures like this one:
The rest’ll be over on the Flickr page in due time.

And the next morning we got to hang out on the beach and run in the surf, going from full outfit to just pants to diaper. We saw jellyfish, and beach joggers, and amused passers-by and a white bird who seemed pretty intent on stealing my socks. Veda spread joy and amusement throughout the land. At least throughout northeastern Florida.

And then it was time to go home. We drove back to Orlando, almost running out of gas in the process and costing Penelope many units of her remaining sanity, but we made it. Gave back our blue minivan and openly admitted wanting one of our own. Caught an earlier flight home so we wouldn’t have to deal with a sleepy bean on the plane. Amused all of Orlando International Airport’s Terminal B with Veda’s peek-a-boo rambunctiousness. Bought yogurt-covered raisins for a hilariously inflated price.

And all my film made it through airport security. Their scanners didn’t swipe the substrate clean, like I had kind of feared, and sure enough, when it came time to drop everything off for processing everything came out great.

For the record, I took only three cameras, thankyouverymuch, and really only one more than your typical Florida Vacation Dad Dweebwhistle. I had a pocket camera, a DSLR and a Holga. That’s it. One for snapshots and videos, one for “real pics” and one for fun.

Which we had. So much fun. I actually ended up wanting to go back to Disney, but staying at one of the hotels on-site this time, and taking the fun monorail to and from the park to check out new stuff each day. Maybe when Veda’s older.

I ended up wanting to return to New Smyrna Beach, and check out all the fun shops and coffee shops and local art galleries on Flagler Street. Spend more time at that Indian Lagoon preserve place. Try a different bagel at the shop where we had breakfast. Commandeer a kayak for an afternoon or two. Watch a shuttle lift off from Cape Canaveral as I bobbed there in the bay, gaping and gasping and snapping a dumb picture or two.

I wanted to go back to Merritt Island, and St. Augustine, and even Weeki Wachee springs. There was a riverboat ride we never got to take there. Maybe another visit – when Veda can *remember* it, right? – would inspire her to become a Weeki Wachee mermaid herself. Or at least grow fins.

I wanted to check out the tilted museum of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not schlock, which I only photographed the front of.

I wanted to do all the tours in the Backroads of Florida book I checked out from our local library, and begrudgingly gave back just a few days ago.

Oh, and I wanted to thank Uncle Mark and Aunt Arlene! Which we did, promptly upon our return and everything.

I’d gone down expecting Florida to be somewhere between this and this:

It turned out to be somewhere between this and this:

And thank goodness. What a blast. We got so, so lucky.

On the wall behind Veda’s high chair sits the thermostat. Touchscreen, alluring, and with the irresistible quality of glowing and beeping when you poke it, this device is all but guaranteed to draw the attention of a two-year-old.

And sure enough, just the other day, Penny had to discourage V from swiveling around in her high chair and reprogramming all the settings. “Veda,” Mama intoned firmly. “Don’t mess with the thermostat. You’ll blow up the house.”

The little one’s eyes got big, and she silently turned back around and sat down to her Cheerios or whatever.

This morning she was back at it. I turned my back for a few seconds to feed Vince and, sure enough, the tell-tale beeping and clicking gave her away. She was standing in the seat, leaning against the plastic box, smiling at the ever-changing numbers on the screen.

Of course I reminded her not to mess with the thermostat, and sat her back down to her breakfast. As soon as I walked away she started reaching for it again, and when I pressed for an explanation she provided this:

“I’m going to blow up the house.”

As you can imagine, I scooted the little arsonist’s chair away from the wall.

So now I’m back over in the kitchen, getting some clean cereal bowls out of the dishwasher. Big one for me, little one for her; big spoon, little spoon. And I hear her over there protesting softly.

“That wasn’t very kind.”

“What wasn’t?” I asked. “Me moving you away from the wall or you trying to blow up the house?” She said the first one. And I supposed she was right… I could and probably should have given her a second chance, tried reasoning with her a little more before going right to restrictiveness. Even if it did end up blowing up the house. It’s early, you know, and my patience isn’t yet at full peak for the day.

But you know what else? I told her she was right, that moving her without further explanation wasn’t very kind. I apologized. And I moved her back.

If a two-year-old’s guilt trip works that quickly on me now, I’m going to be pretty much helpless when she’s a teenager.

With all the devastation in Japan lately, along with situations in Libya and Yemen and elsewhere, it’s getting pretty easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless. (There is something we can do, though. Doctors Without Borders, as one example, has teams arriving in the affected area by helicopter now and they’re of course collecting funds and working with Japanese organizations to continue helping.)

Yesterday afternoon, though, it felt good to get out for a drive and spend a little time with some beings who don’t know anything about any of this. Just a few moments of simple joy and wonder at nature. We’re lucky to live where I can grant Veda’s back-seat requests so easily.

I take a lot of pictures, it’s true. But I take a lot of little videos too, what with my trusty little Canon SD1100 in the left pocket and iPhone 3Gs in the right at all times. 1799 videos last year, to be exact, and it seemed a shame to let them all go to waste. So here’s a little movie I put together, using just a few. You can probably guess who’s the star of the show, but look also for guest cameos by some of Veda’s grandmas and grandpas, her Aunt VZ, Mr. Ryan and even Jesse, the monkey we met at the local bread shop. Plus a singing deer head.

Enjoy.

And Happy New Year!

I’m so glad I let my little sister talk me into a trip to Jamaica. It all kind of came together, as things so rarely do, that she had a ticket left over, or some credit or something, and I had time, and Penny’s schedule allowed it, and Mom was even able to come too. A whole week away. All five of us. In 80 degree, sunny weather. In December. You know how some people just don’t know how good they’ve got it? That’s not me this time. I knew. We all knew. Luckiest ducks in the pond, is what we felt like.

We were especially fortunate because the place we originally booked was undergoing renovations, so we got automatically upgraded (sweet!) to a much nicer place that was probably way out of our price range. More importantly, it turned out that the resort – Beaches Negril, to be exact, and I’d recommend it to anyone – has some sort of alliance with Sesame Street. So for weeks before we left, Penny and I were familiarizing Veda with Bert and Ernie, and Big Bird, and Cookie Monster, and her favorites, Zoë and Elmo.

It worked. Every night the resort had a show featuring all the characters, with music and everything, and incredibly talented Jamaican dancers inside those suits would bounce and jump around the stage while all the kids pretty much lost their minds. There was even a little dancefloor in front of the stage, set down a few feet, where the kids could go dance too, but Veda was a little to scared to approach it at first.

(I wish I’d gotten more pictures of the shows, and in actuality I did, and may post some later, but this batch of photos is all from my Holga camera, which doesn’t do so well indoors.)

There’s no joy quite like seeing your kid happy. The first night, when Ernie came out on stage and started dancing to “The Rhythm Is Gonna Get Ya,” even doing the splits at one point, Veda’s eyes were as big as saucers and her mouth was smiling even wider. And I couldn’t stop staring at her myself, just laughing and grinning too. I was clapping for her as much as I was for the show.

In lots of other ways, a resort like this is a good place to go for a vacation with kids. You never have to worry about food, of course, since every meal is right there in one of the restaurants, and it’s all really good, in my opinion. When it’s time for a nap, you just walk a couple minutes back to the room and hang out for a bit – no need to hop in a car and go to a hotel or anything. And Veda slept well each night, relatively speaking, since the room was always the same and the crib they provided seemed pretty darn comfy. In the mornings, she and I would just go out the front door and roam the grounds barefoot, the temperature already in the 70s as the sun was coming up and all the place’s interesting scenery coming into focus. I must have watched Veda pick up and drag around the oversized chess pieces on their outdoor board for 45 minutes solid, two or three days in a row.

During the day, after everybody else woke up, we got to decide whether to swim in the pool or go to the beach, and that was basically the hardest thinking anyone had to do all day. I still remember how funny it felt to watch Veda toddle past the bar one afternoon and get flagged down by a bartender: “Princess! Come over here, please. I have a drink I make for you.” Then he whipped up some frosty pink deliciousness in a plastic cup with a straw and a little umbrella for her, and she thanked him, and off we went again. She loved it.

Everybody who goes to Jamaica, though, raves about the same thing – the people. I’m not sure I can even imagine an uptight Jamaican, and while there are many beautiful places in the world, there aren’t many where the natives seem truly happy to see you. It’s like they just really enjoy sharing this paradise with outsiders – which may not make much sense to the rest of us, who imagine we’d keep such beauty all to ourselves, but we certainly do appreciate their hospitality.

There were three people in particular who made our vacation extra-special, and here I’m going to cite their deeds as a warm-up for the letter I plan to write to the resort itself: Odel, who was our waiter on the third or fourth night we were there, did an excellent job taking care of us as we struggled to choose between all the fantastic-looking seafood on the restaurant menu. What amazed Penny and I, though, was what happened after we left. We had to go early, you see, because it was well past Veda’s bedtime and she was in the process of having a breakdown. So we apologized to Mom and Katie, asked them to explain things to Odel, packed up our daughter and sped out. About 10 minutes later, after we’d changed her into PJs and put her to bed in our room, we were sitting quietly in Mom and Katie’s room next door when we heard a knock. It was Odel. With our entreés. On our plates. Covered in plastic, with silverware and everything. Mom and Katie had told him we had to run, and he’d insisted on bringing us our meals while they finished theirs. I’ve never waited tables, I’ll admit, but I think it’s safe to say I wouldn’t have even *thought* of doing that in his position, much less followed through with it.

The second was Samantha. She was overseeing the Rubber-Duckie Hunt with Ernie on Wednesday afternoon, and proved unflappable and tireless in helping Veda scour the playground for each one of the little rubber ducks they then returned to a very grateful Ernie. Veda even let Samantha pick her up, and carry her around the playground at times, which I’ve *never* seen her do with a stranger.

My favorite, though, was Gloria. She was the chef at the main restaurant during our stay, preparing things to order during Breakfast and Lunch. Mom and Katie came back to the breakfast table one morning going on and on about how great Gloria’s omelets are, and how I *had* to try one, and how she’s *so* nice, and so on and so forth. So that afternoon I went over to meet her, and naturally they were right. In addition to being incredibly skilled at food preparation, Gloria happens to be exceptionally nice, and I quickly got into a conversation with her. I asked her what kind of food *she* likes to make, what’s on the menu when she goes home.

“Not exactly this,” she told me. “I’m Jamaican; I make Jamaican food.”

“Like what?” I asked, and she described a typical lunch she would put together back at her place. “That sounds awesome!” I blurted, and without a moment’s hesitation Gloria offered to make it for me. “I’m off tomorrow,” she said, “But I’ll bring you some on Friday. You’ll still be here, right?” I assured her I would.

And sure enough, Friday afternoon I walked over to the grill to see Gloria, smiling, and waving me around the counter. She handed me two plates, again covered in plastic, one with fried plantains, yams, dasheen and some amazing Jamaican dumplings, and the other with what Gloria called “Codfish with Vegetables.” She asked me to tell her what I thought when I was finished.

Well, I came back asking for the recipe. I’m sure I can’t cook it like she did, but that codfish thing was as good as anything I’ve ever had. And it wasn’t even on the menu!

Now, not everybody was Gloria, of course. The guy who had to take me out on the sailboat one afternoon (the waves were too high to send out guests unaccompanied) did seem a little perturbed to be interrupted from his conversation at first. But once we got out on the water, and got to talking ourselves a little, he warmed right up. Even let me sail the boat on our way back.

Overall, the trip was just the way I described it to my friend Lindsey on Monday: Perfect. I’d go back tomorrow if I could, though I don’t really need to. A few days on Island Time should stick with me for quite a while.

And Veda? Oh man. That kid still won’t stop talking about it. I almost forgot the best part: Our last night there, she worked up all her baby courage for one spectacular feat. After all that time refusing to go down and dance with the other kids, she decided she would. And she did. And then she went one better. As Penny and I stood by in shock, she headed over to the stage steps, climbed them one by one, got up on stage and danced with Elmo.

Even he was pretty shocked. But to his credit, he started dancing with her, and for a few incredible moments Veda and Elmo danced together, on stage, both doing her signature Tiny-sumo Armflap Maneuver.

I still can’t believe it.

Here’s an uncharacteristically useful bit of advice from me – especially if you happen to use iPhoto to organize your pictures.

We’ve been using the “Smart Album” feature for a while now to quickly and automatically sort through the umpteen thousand images in our library. For instance, a couple of simple filters make sure our “Latest and Greatest” folder always has the top-rated pictures from the last few months. The only problem is that we have to go through the library periodically (I do it when I upload now) and make sure to note the best pics in the batch. Then I just give them 4 or 5 stars, and voila: They land there in the Latest and Greatest folder, where they’ll actually eventually show up on Penny’s iPhone. (I set her phone to sync with that particular folder, so now when anyone asks to see some recent photos of Veda, they aren’t disappointed.)

And today I got to wondering what the three of us were up to at this time last year. That’s easy enough to track down; you just scroll back through the library and check. But I wished there was a way to go straight to what I was looking for, and there is:

“File>New Smart Album…” gets you there. Of course, it’s just as easy to modify that little window of time, so I made another automagically interesting group of pictures from *3* years ago, and 7.

My first observation? Our photo-taking frequency has steadily surged: 20 days in 2003 netted 105 photos. By 2007, we took 494 in the same amount of time. And last year we managed to snap 1217 photos (guess what was the main subject?) in just under three weeks of early autumn.

If you can use this tip too, I’d be curious to know your observations.